Tag: John Grisham

The Guardians by John Grisham

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

The guardians

From the inside flap:

He was framed for murder.
Now he needs a miracle.

22 years ago Quincy Miller was sentenced to life without parole. He was accused of killing Keith Russo, a lawyer in a small Florida town. But there were no reliable witnesses and little motive. Just the fact that Russo had botched Quincy’s divorce case, that Quincy was black in a largely all-white town and that a blood-splattered torch was found in the boot of Quincy’s car. A torch he swore was planted. A torch that was conveniently destroyed in a fire just before his trial.

The lack of evidence made no difference to judge or jury. In the eyes of the law Quincy was guilty and, no matter how often he protested his innocence, his punishment was life in prison.

Finally, after 22 years, comes Quincy’s one and only chance of freedom. An innocence lawyer and minister, Cullen Post, takes on his case. Post has exonerated eight men in the last ten years. He intends to make Quincy the next.

But there were powerful and ruthless people behind Russo’s murder. They prefer that an innocent man dies in jail rather than one of them. There’s one way to guarantee that. They killed one lawyer 22 years ago, and they’ll kill another without a second thought.

My thoughts:

Years ago I read as many John Grisham books that I could find – I loved them. So I was delighted to find that The Guardians, his latest book is really good too, even though it is written in the present tense. I often find that style irritating but in this case I was gripped by the story and the tense didn’t trouble me in the slightest.

The book is based on a real story and a real person, which gives it a really authentic feel. Guardian Ministries is based Centurion Ministries founded by James McCluskey, working to prove the innocence of convicted criminals, convinced of their innocence. The narrator, Cullen Post, a lawyer who is also a priest, is working on behalf of several prisoners. The book opens dramatically as Duke Russell is having his last meal before being executed. But the main part of the story is centred on Quincy Miller who maintains he was framed for the murder of lawyer Keith Russo and has been in prison for 22 years.

The only small criticism I have is that at first several minor characters are introduced which muddied the waters a little but once I got further into the book it became clear that there were major miscarriages of justice that Post was investigating, as he concentrates on Quincy’s case. It’s an easy read but packed with detail, a lot of it quite shocking. I enjoyed it immensely, especially learning about the US legal system.

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton; 01 edition (15 Oct. 2019)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1473684439
  • ISBN-13: 978-1473684430
  • Source: I bought the book

My rating: 4*

 

My Friday Post: The Guardians by John Grisham

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Book Beginnings Button

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

The guardians

The Guardians by John Grisham is described as ‘A canny and engrossing blend of two types of Grisham novel: enough of the familiar formula of a single lawsuit in a single town, mixed with a more picaresque and multistranded approach that has the significant advantage of taking in a wider swathe of America’ – The Sunday Times

Duke Russell is not guilty of the unspeakable crimes for which he was convicted; nonetheless, he is scheduled to be executed for them in one hour and forty-four minutes.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56These are the rules:

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

Otis has been married to June for seventeen years. Frankie is assuming he is quite aware of her struggles with the truth, so why beat around the bush?

‘You’re calling her a liar?’ Otis said.

‘No not now. But you said yourself she was a different woman back then. She and  Quincy were at war. He owed her a bunch of money that he couldn’t pay. The cops leaned on her to take the stand and point the finger.’

Blurb

22 years ago Quincy Miller was sentenced to life without parole. He was accused of killing Keith Russo, a lawyer in a small Florida town. But there were no reliable witnesses and little motive. Just the fact that Russo had botched Quincy’s divorce case, that Quincy was black in a largely all-white town and that a blood-splattered torch was found in the boot of Quincy’s car. A torch he swore was planted. A torch that was conveniently destroyed in a fire just before his trial.

The lack of evidence made no difference to judge or jury. In the eyes of the law Quincy was guilty and, no matter how often he protested his innocence, his punishment was life in prison.

Finally, after 22 years, comes Quincy’s one and only chance of freedom. An innocence lawyer and minister, Cullen Post, takes on his case. Post has exonerated eight men in the last ten years. He intends to make Quincy the next.

But there were powerful and ruthless people behind Russo’s murder. They prefer that an innocent man dies in jail rather than one of them. There’s one way to guarantee that. They killed one lawyer 22 years ago, and they’ll kill another without a second thought.

~~~

Have you read this book? What did you think?

WWW Wednesday: 18 July 2018

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

IMG_1384-0

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

I’m currently reading: The Tudor Crown by Joanna Hickson. I know very little about Henry VII, so I’m thoroughly enjoying reading this book. It begins in 1471 as Henry, then aged 14,  and his uncle, Jasper Tudor, the Earl of Pembroke, are at sea off the coast of South Wales on course for France, when a storm forces them to land in Brittany. There they found refuge with Francis, Duke of Brittany for the next 14 years.

 

Synopsis

When Edward of York takes back the English crown, the Wars of the Roses scatter the Lancastrian nobility and young Henry Tudor, with a strong claim to the throne, is forced into exile.

Recently widowed and vulnerable, his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, forges an uncomfortable alliance with Edward’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Swearing an oath of allegiance to York, Margaret agrees to marry the king’s shrewdest courtier, Lord Stanley. But can she tread the precarious line between duty to her husband, loyalty to her son, and her obligation to God and the king?

When tragedy befalls Edward’s reign, Richard of York’s ruthless actions fire the ambition of mother and son. As their destinies converge each of them will be exposed to betrayal and treachery and in their gruelling bid for the Tudor crown, both must be prepared to pay the ultimate price…

I’ve recently finished: Camino Island by John Grisham, which was not what I expected. It begins well with a daring robbery but then slows down almost to a snail’s pace.

Camino Island

 

Synopsis:

The most daring and devastating heist in literary history targets a high security vault located deep beneath Princeton University.

Valued at $25 million (though some would say priceless) the five manuscripts of F Scott Fitzgerald’s only novels are amongst the most valuable in the world. After an initial flurry of arrests, both they and the ruthless gang of thieves who took them have vanished without trace.

Now it falls to struggling writer Mercer Mann to crack a case that has thwarted the FBI’s finest minds.

My next book is most likely to be No Further Questions byGillian McAllister. I thought  her first book Everything But the Truth was brilliant, so I have high hopes for this book.

 

Synopsis:

The police say she’s guilty.

She insists she’s innocent.

She’s your sister.

You loved her.

You trusted her.

But they say she killed your child.

Who do you believe?
_________________

Have you read any of these books?  Do any of them tempt you? 

Gray Mountain by John Grisham

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Years ago, well before I began this blog, I read many of John Grisham’s books and loved them. Then, somehow, he went off my radar, but when I saw Gray Mountain on display in the library I remembered how much I used to enjoy his books and borrowed it.

Gray Mountain

 

I don’t think he has changed much – this book is just as much a campaign against injustice and the misuse of power, about the good little guys against the big bad guys as his earlier books are. In this case it’s the big coal companies that come under the microscope, companies that are  ruining the environment by strip-mining in the Appalachian mountains. I was amazed to read the details – clear-felling the forests, scalping the earth and then blasting away the mountain tops to get at the coal. All the trees, topsoil and rocks are then dumped into the valleys, wiping out the vegetation, wildlife and streams. Gray Mountain is one of the mountains destroyed in this way.

But this is running ahead in the book. It begins in 2008 when Samantha Kofer has lost her job as a highly paid third-year associate with New York’s largest law firm following the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers bank. One of the options open to her is to work for free for twelve months as an intern at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in Brady, Virginia, run by Mattie Wyatt.  After that there is the possibility that she could get her old job back.

Up until then Samantha had only worked in corporate law and had never been in a courtroom, but she soon became immersed in a variety of  cases, including meths dealers and people suffering from black lung disease.

Gray Mountain is owned by Mattie’s nephew, Donovan Gray, also a lawyer, who is taking on cases against the Big Coal companies.  One of the cases involves the Tate family, two little boys who were killed when a boulder from the rock clearance crashed into the trailer where they were sleeping.  Although Samantha is horrified by the situation and wants to help Donovan and his brother Jeff in their search for justice, she feels reluctant to get involved as Donovan’s  methods are sometimes not strictly legal – and she doesn’t feel she belongs in Brady. And there is still the opportunity for her to work in New York, when a former colleague offers her a job.

But she gets emotionally involved with the people and their problems and begins to like litigation:

This was the rush, the high, the narcotic that pushed trial lawyers to the brink. This was the thrill that Donovan sought when he refused to settle for cash on the table. This was the overdose of testosterone that inspired men like her father to dash around the world chasing cases. (page 197)

She has to decide whether to stay with the Clinic or take the job in New York, and she loves the city life. It’s not an easy decision, and it is not revealed until right at the very end of the book.

Although Gray Mountain doesn’t quite match up to my memories of Grisham’s earlier books, I still enjoyed it. At first I thought he was introducing too much detail about the coal companies’ mining practices, but I soon realised how essential it is to understanding the issues. At times it’s like reading a series of short stories, but the main theme is well maintained. I liked the view of the small town community, the mountain scenery, the legal cases large and small and the tension created by the danger of opposing the big coal companies.

Reading Challenge: Color Coded Reading Challenge, with the word ‘Gray’ in the title and the cover being mainly grey in colour it qualifies for the category a book with ‘Black’or any shade of black in the title/on the cover.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: B is for The Brethren

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

crime_fiction_alphabetKerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is running a weekly meme: The Alphabet in Crime Fiction. Each week you have to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Kerrie explains that your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book’s title, the first letter of an author’s first name, or the first letter of the author’s surname.

So you see you have lots of choice. You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.

This week’s letter is B and the book I’ve chosen to write about is The Brethren by John Grisham. I first read this several years ago when I was having a Grisham binge, reading every book by him that I could find. I read them so quickly and then promptly forgot about them.

This one sticks in my mind a bit more than some of the others, mainly because of its title. There are two strands to the story. The first concerns the Brethren – three judges imprisoned in Trumble a minimum security federal prison. They meet every week in the law library with the prison’s approval to hear cases and settle disputes between the other prisoners, and also, but not with approval, they’re running a gay-extortion scheme raking in hundreds of  thousands of dollars. The money is then smuggled out to their attorney and deposited in their secret offshore bank account.

Then there is Aaron Lake, a congressman talked into running for President by Teddy Maynard of the CIA.  Lake is handsome, articulate and smart, with no bad habits, clean as a whistle with a pretty dull private life since he’d become a widower: a solid candidate, very electable. But then, of course the two plots link up.

I haven’t re-read the book, but my memory of it is, like all the other Grisham books that I’ve read, that it is fast-paced, packed with legal detail, complicated and for me at least totally absorbing. I may even read it again.